“It Would Take A Knife Out of My Back”

“This can be done, and should be done, without posing a serious risk to military readiness,” Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, said today. He was talking about ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which now keeps gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, and he was right. A lot of our troops think so, too. Seventy per cent think that a repeal would have no effect, a mixed effect, or even a positive effect, according to the Pentagon’s “Comprehensive Review of the Issues Associated with a Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ ” (pdf) released today. The working group that produced the report got survey results from a hundred and fifteen thousand service members, plus forty-five thousand spouses, and spoke with tens of thousands more in forums on bases and in online exchanges. They learned a lot. (A side benefit of all of this may be a trove of material for future historians.) The section of the report called “What We Heard” includes some worries about children seeing gay couples on a base (“Adam and Steve”) and about sharing showers, and this: “Some will be flamboyant; they might get a beating.” But it also includes these thoughts:

In the unit that I am in now there are individuals that are homosexual. Of course they aren’t able to come out and say it but we know. I really don’t see an impact in my unit.

All I care about is can you carry a gun, can you walk the post, as far as people in my unit.

Please repeal the act. We need all available men and women who are willing to serve their country, no matter what their sexual orientation is.

As Battalion Commander for a unit that recently completed 12-month combat deployment to Iraq, I can say unequivocally that gay/lesbian Soldiers are integrated across our force, at the lowest tactical levels, with no negative operational impacts. In fact, my unit was far better, particularly technically and from a leadership perspective, with these Soldiers in positions of operational and organizational significance.

We’ve done it before with African Americans, and we have done it before with females. We can do it again. As brothers and sisters in arms, we stand and fight not only for our country, but for one another.

And, from a service member now not telling:

I doubt I would run down the street yelling ‘I’m out’; but it would take a knife out of my back I have had for a long time. You have no idea what it is like to have to serve in silence.

Here are some numbers from the report: More than a third of the service members believed that they were currently serving with someone who was gay or lesbian, while two thirds said that they had at some point. And:

Anecdotally, we also heard a number of Service members tell us about a leader, co-worker, or fellow Service member they greatly liked, trusted, or admired, who they later learned was gay; and how once that person’s sexual orientation was revealed to them, it made little or no difference to the relationship.

Or, more bluntly:

As one special operations force warfighter told us, “We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.”

From a policy perspective, here’s the key paragraph:

Based on all we saw and heard, our assessment is that, when coupled with the prompt implementation of the recommendations we offer below, the risk of repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to overall military effectiveness is low.

The report has recommendations to address any “limited and isolated disruption” a repeal might cause. These do not include separate bathrooms, which should be fine; the working group also more or less punts on benefits for same-sex partners, saying that there won’t be any now while noting that the issue of gay marriage is in a state of political and legal flux. But the most important recommendation is that officers should act like leaders, which they are perfectly capable of doing: “The clear message from the Working Group’s assessment is ‘leadership matters most.’ ”

That point can be seen in the findings as well. The report backed up what we’ve heard recently about the greater resistance to repeal within the Marine Corps.What is it about the Marines? There’s been talk about their culture and history and even rooming situations, but there is also a question of leadership. Troops do hear what their officers say, and the commandant of the Marine corps has been telling everyone who will listen that he likes D.A.D.T., as he thinks Marines do. (This is in contrast to Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who said that he opposed requiring soldiers and sailors to lie about their lives because it “comes down to honor.”) In a way, it is remarkable that so many Marines, in a service that particularly emphasizes discipline, disagree. Officers can help a great deal. They can also learn from their troops. And they can look at how those troops feel about what matters most when they are on a battlefield. In that respect, the most revealing, and encouraging, statistic may actually be the one about the most reluctant segment of the military of all:

67% of those in Marine combat arms units predict working alongside a gay man or lesbian will have a negative effect on their unit’s effectiveness in completing its mission “in a field environment or out at sea.” By contrast, in response to the same question, but during “an intense combat situation,” the percentage drops to 48%. See section VII. While 48% indicates a significant level of concern, the near 20-point difference in these two environments reflects that, in a combat situation, the warfighter appreciates that differences with those within his unit become less important than defeating the common enemy.

Then there is the question of political leadership. The Times noted that Gates “said it was a “matter of urgency” that the lame-duck Senate vote in the next weeks to repeal the law. If not, he said there would be a fight in the courts and the possibility that the repeal would be “imposed immediately by judicial fiat.” Is it being treated with such urgency by both sides?

This isn’t just about the lives and careers of gay and lesbian troops—though it is about that—or, for that matter, about straight ones. Here’s another thing a soldier told the working group:

I am willing to be a KIA [Killed In Action] because I think America values equality and civil liberties. It would be great if the institution I served in mirrored exactly these ideals.

John McCain has made opposition to gays and lesbians openly serving their country his great battle, which is sad. Is President Obama going to make repeal of D.A.D.T. one of his? Someone needs to. Our soldiers shouldn’t have to do all the fighting for us.

Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.